LG Mach Hands-on at CTIA MobileCON 2012 [Video]

The LG Mach has just been announced, and we have gotten the chance to get up close and personal with it. This physical keyboard smartphone is a mid-end device, as are most of its keyboard competitors. With that said, it is definitely not as impressive, especially right after using a beast like the LG Optimus G.

The slide-out QWERTY keyboard will probably be the main attraction. The buttons don’t stick out very much, giving it less tactile feedback, but it is nothing one doesn’t get used to. We found the keyboard to be as good as the Motorola Photon Q’s, and it does have a full 5-row setup with a dedicated number row.

As Chris mentions in the video, we found the device to be very “pocketable”. It is thinner and smaller compared to a device like the Photon Q. The only downside is you will have to live with a 4-inch screen, which is rather small for most of us Android fans.

As a device, the Mach performs well. It is by no means a beast, but it will get the job done. It is definitely as fast as you would expect a mid-tier device to be. So don’t hope for any amazing results (but it is also very pleasant to use).

Build quality was surprisingly good! In fact, probably better than the Optimus G. The back is made of a metal-like plastic material. The rim around the display is solid metal, though, and the device has a very sturdy and high quality feel to it.

This is definitely one to look out for if you are thinking of getting an affordable device with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, so check it out and give us your 2 cents in the comments.

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A phone for those who begged for a qwerty physical keyboard, LG is bringing its A game!

johnny989

Swiftkey > Any physical phone keyboard

ari_free

ha try typing in your password with swiftkey. If you can, you need a stronger password.

johnny989

…It’s really not that hard. Point is, you can type full sentences faster with less errors on swiftkey over a physical keyboard

johnny989

Of course, I only mean a physical phone keyboard.

ari_free

I tend to type things that fail most predictive keyboards since I usually resort to typing when voice recognition fails. Sometimes I have to edit and change a single letter in the middle of a word.

peanutsrevenge

I disagree.
Tactile feedback is advantageous to fast and accurate typing.

Roll on context sensitive keyboards with tactile feedback.

hemipw54

There’s that crappy little slot external speaker again. STOP IT LG!

Zenstrive

GSM?

acey_zero

For some reason all the half way decent qwertys seem to always be Sprint or Verizon exclusives…

Imaginary

Yeah I hate that. I got so excited for this phone, but I probably won’t be able to use it here in Europe because of the built-in SIM Sprint likes to screw me over with. Same thing happened with PHoton Q.

Either way, looks like lg might be my next phone unless htc starts unlocking bootloaders… Anyone know how lg is with rooting/flashing?

Agasicles Stamas

This looks like an LG Viper chassis with a physical keyboard added. That phone was not bad performance-wise, but it suffered from poor battery life (IMO), even after I found expanded capacity batteries for it. And there was not much expectation that it was going to get updated to ICS. But I did like the display. LG makes some nice stuff, but they do not have my confidence that they will deliver Android OS updates with the same commitment (relative term) as some of the other manufacturers.